Recent events should not have dimmed that glow. The killing of Amadou Diallo was obviously an aberration; cops aren’t in the habit of firing 41 times at an unarmed immigrant without any criminal record. In fact, the NYPD uses deadly force less often than police in other cities. And for all the excesses, poor neighborhoods are not roiling with complaints against police. I spoke last week with Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, who coauthored a new report on community-police relations for the nonpolitical Vera Institute of Justice. Mateu-Gelabert studied two police precincts in the Bronx that happen to border where Diallo was shot: “All of the concerns were about drug dealing and maybe police not answering the phone–and none were about misconduct.”
So why is the entire black community now openly hostile to Giuliani, and everyone from rabbis to former mayors to little old ladies who basically like cops joining Al Sharpton in open civil disobedience? Why have many other big cities experienced similar decreases in crime without the same sense that they are trading away civil liberties? The answer lies in Giuliani’s style and temperament, which heavily influences the style and temperament of the thousands of people who work for him. Over coffee last week at Gracie Mansion, the mayor argued that “there’s a media and societal preoccupation with style, and the reality is the voters mostly don’t give a damn.” Perhaps not, but his temperamental arrogance may end up stripping him of credit for his accomplishments.
Giuliani’s administration is remarkably white, but he’s not a racist politician. In fact, he’s not really a politician at all. He’s still a prosecutor. Politicians reach out. They obey the old maxim to “hold your friends close, and your enemies closer.” Prosecutors are accustomed to brooking no dissent. They say, as Giuliani did of major black elected officials he wouldn’t meet with for years, “What’s there to talk about?” Why talk to someone suspect?
In New York, where the mayor is feared, anyone’s a potential perp. For many young black or Hispanic men, that’s literally true. For the rest of the city, it’s figuratively so. Dare to cross Giuliani even once and you’ve perpetrated a crime against Rudy. Rarely has a political figure so embodied the defects of his virtues–legendary stubbornness amid high principles; an authoritarian streak that undermines his welcome authority. Giuliani says that this has become a stereotype. But stereotypes are generally based on some truth.
The city’s usual stew of insults has been thickened by talk of trade-offs and traded places. Is getting intoxicated drivers off the road worth the risk of having your car wrongly confiscated? (A new Giuliani initiative allows the city to seize the cars of suspected drunken drivers even if they aren’t convicted.) Is getting guns off the streets worth racial profiling? How would Jewish or Italian or any other parents feel if their sons were routinely told to “Spread ’em!”? Giuliani talks of the “tragedy” of the Diallo case, but he could use more Clintonian empathy for the emotions and real experience (tens of thousands of frisks a year) that lie behind the outrage. If life is so good, New Yorkers wonder, why do the trade-offs have to be so stark?
The mayor wasn’t entirely wrong to be skeptical of the demonstrations. There’s misplaced nostalgia at work when elected officials show up to be ritually arrested. If President Clinton hadn’t been running a war, you half expected to see him down at police headquarters. (Note to Clinton haters: that may have been your best chance to see him in handcuffs.) Civil disobedience is best expressed by the powerless, not the powerful.
But Giuliani’s defensiveness was politically tone-deaf. He should have realized he was outmaneuvered by Al Sharpton and that it was time to retreat. While this incident itself might not hurt the mayor in a Senate race, the poor political instincts could. (Although he hasn’t announced, he sounds every inch a candidate, whether Hillary Clinton runs or not.) The mayor insisted he could be happy and productive in the Senate, even if he can’t order anyone around. But it would clearly be a holding action before a presidential campaign. Some of his allies suggest he might have run this time if it weren’t for his shaky marriage. With his will to power, it’s only a matter of time.
Giuliani knows that he has to start listening more. He held up a yellow legal sheet on which he had scrawled dozens of suggestions he’d heard in recent days for doing things differently. The NYPD will be under orders from the harsh mayor to act less harsh. He’ll meet more often with blacks. The real question for him nationally is whether he has a second act. What does a crime buster do when crime has been busted? The president of the New York City Board of Education released a report last week noting that a third of the city’s elementary schools don’t have playgrounds and more than half the high schools still aren’t connected to the Internet. If Giuliani is to repair this breach and move up, he’ll have to act more like a teacher and less like a cop.
